Overlooked Records 2014

Some of the year's worthy records that you may have missed, including albums by Madlib and Freddie Gibbs, eclectic pop upstart Shamir, infectious Swedish punks Makthaverskan, Japanese sample whiz Lee, and many more.

As is our tradition, we're taking this space over the holiday weekend to highlight some very good records you might have missed. None of these releases received a Best New Music designation and not all were rated above an 8.0, but all are records worth revisiting. Read, listen, and click through for the full reviews. We'll be back with album reviews on Monday.

Wobbly four-tracks, cassette labels, pitch-shifted vocals, major-key melodies covering for minor breakdowns on bad vibes and good-enough drugs—once used by home recorders to twist pop cliches, these have all become cliches themselves. There's nothing inherently original about Alex G's isolated weirdo guise, so why DSU and not another of the hundreds of records on Bandcamp that you could find this minute that sound something like it? Well, it's because Alex G is probably the least gimmicky of them all; unlike Ariel Pink or Jackson Scott or Bradford Cox, there's almost nothing creepy about his run through the annals of '90s indie rock. In fact, Alex G is most notable for his quality control, a mundane and important strength that ensures every song, every melody, and every lyric is given its proper due. This isn't a restless creative, but a songwriter, and you sense that if you asked him to crank out a pop-punk or folk or chiptune rather than something in the mold of Pavement and Built to Spill, he could do that too. Of course, there are quirks—the unnerving guitar solos, the muffled keyboards, dubious vocal tricks—but they never sound like he's fucking around. They're just like the NCAA Football Create-A-Team cover art and its creator's quasi-anonymous namesake, something that makes the familiar just unfamiliar enough. —Ian Cohen

The core members of Sunn O))) have never been afraid to collaborate; they've opened their main drone gig to a number of outside musicians and personalities, as well as playing in various extracurricular non-Sunn setups. Stephen O'Malley has been especially prolific in that regard, churning out solo and group projects across genres and in the visual art and live drama realms. But his trio with producer/musician Randall Dunn (who mixes Sunn live and has recorded them in the studio) and Australian guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/occasional Sunn regular Oren Ambarchi feels like a legitimate band. The group recorded Shade Themes From Kairos five years ago, then took their time releasing it. The songs were composed to unedited footage from Kairos, the film portion of a multimedia project by Belgian artist Alexis Destoop, though you don't need to know anything about Destoop or the work to be sucked into these 60 minutes: Across five expansive pieces, O'Malley, Dunn, and Ambarchi meld fiery psych rock, gurgling electronics, spooky feedback, hand-drummed jazz smoke-outs, mind-swirling trance, and gossamer hums, among other things. There's a dusky loner folk piece with brushed drums, gently plucked guitars, and spacey electronics fronted by whispering Japanese vocalist Ai Aso that'll make you stop in your tracks, and that moment of calm is followed by "Ebony Pagoda", a 21-minute drone fest that sounds like a glistening, early-morning Sunn O))). Though these are "shade themes," there's often something bright just outside the dark patches. —Brandon Stosuy

Over the past five years, Damon McMahon of Amen Dunes has built a reputation in underground circles, writing and recording explicitly lo-fi songs that showcase sticky melodies buried under layers of obscuring fuzz. His early records, including his Sacred Bones debut Through Donkey Jaw from 2011, showed promise while suggesting that his “thing” might be too niche for a wider audience. But this year’s Love blew such notions out of the water. Featuring contributions from members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Iceage, Love is such a shocking about-face for McMahon that it’s initially hard to tell that this is the same artist who made those earlier records. The textures are airy, the presence of noise takes on a form of soft drone instead of static layers, and, as the title implies, there’s a romantic naturalism to these shamanistic tunes, like Van Morrison if he was raised in an ashram. McMahon taps into a roughly hewn yet oddly beautiful wavelength on Love, an intimate work of mystery. —Larry Fitzmaurice

In recent years, more producers are finding ways to blend noise with techno. Ren Schofield, who records as Container, is one of the best at both respecting the music's history while simultaneously pushing it to its limits. Across two albums titled LP, two EPs, and assorted splits, he's been digging out and discovering his own sound. This year's four-song Adhesive is his most fully realized and fleshed-out effort; on it, he creates a splay of distorted, decaying dance bits that remain crystalline and clean-sounding despite their decomposition. They're joyful, even if dark and topically fucked up, with Schofield mixing in strains of motorik, overdriven post-punk, goth funk, lo-fi industrial, and minimalist techno to create maximalist dance-noise that can barely be contained in the EP's 20 minutes. —Brandon Stosuy

After a few years where guitar-driven indie rock receded from the spotlight, the genre has been making up for lost time. You can’t call it a comeback (even when guitars aren’t the central focus of the conversation, they never really disappear from view), but records from Real Estate, Parquet Courts, Perfect Pussy, White Lung, and others have stood out as strong entries in the genre—and you can count Worcester outfit the Hotelier in that esteemed group, too. The band’s second album, Home Like NoPlace Is There, packs an ambitious, raw tunefulness into 36 perfectly paced minutes. The Hotelier channel the angsty burn of Jawbreaker, Titus Andronicus’ feel for ramshackle compositions, and Les Savy Fav’s precision-wound riffs into music that brims with personality.

Home Like NoPlace Is There is stuffed with standouts—the throat-shredding intensity of “Life in Drag”, the sweeping rise-and-fall of “Discomfort Revisited”—but its greatest strength is its overall cohesiveness, a flow as impeccable as any rock album in recent memory. “An Introduction to the Album” is exactly that, and you couldn't ask for a more declarative opening salvo; figurative centerpiece “Housebroken” turns an anthemic mid-tempo sway into a rollicking breakdown, and “Dendron” serves as an excellent smash-and-bash to round things out. Coupled with lyrics that conjure frustration, confusion, and loss, Home Like NoPlace Is There is an impressive statement from a group of relative unknowns, as well as one of the most surprising breakout records of the year. —Larry Fitzmaurice

"My daddy told me how to drink my pain away/ My daddy told me how to leave somebody"–Isaiah Rashad is plainspoken and conversational in everything, especially with his pain. Schoolboy Q is more unpredictable and flamboyant than Rashad; Ab-Soul more poetic; Jay Rock is harder; and Kendrick more charismatic. But Rashad is an effortlessly honest artist, and his music mixes up eras and memories: He's from Chattanooga, but his production gestures at Aquemini and The Love Below while his choruses quote Master P. The Cilvia Demo might not have attracted the attention or widespread acclaim of early Top Dawg projects like Section.80 or Habits & Contradictions, but like those albums, it offered you a mood, multicolored and inviting, to sink into. With Cilvia, Rashad built a corner away from the rest of rap, a muttered album that feels private even when it's playing at a party. —Jayson Greene

Twenty-seven-year-old Thailand-via-Japan producer Ryuhei Asano started out as a rapper before switching to production; in the first quarter of 2014, he released three full-lengths of intriguing sound-collage instrumentals, including highlight Shine. Lee name-checks Madlib and Flying Lotus as influences, like a lot of bedroom beatmakers, but he still manages a unique sound. It's a warped approach to the Books’ mix-and-match tendencies that finds equal room for dub textures and Drake samples. “Sometimes I play music on iTunes randomly before I go to sleep, then when I hear a great song, I wake up and think, ‘OK, I can sample something,’” Asano told us in a Rising interview earlier this year, and Shine is the type of hazy, in-between-spaces beat music that dreams are made of. —Larry Fitzmaurice

Emerging house producer Leon Vynehall has had an enviable career since he first appeared in 2012. He's worked with hotly-tipped dance labels like Will Saul's Aus Music and George FitzGerald's ManMakeMusic, releasing confident and versatile EPs that dabble in vintage aesthetics, ornate instrumentation, and sinewy club grooves. Last year's ubiquitous "Brother" single found Vynehall operating at his most hedonistic and immediate in a slyly satisfying way, but in retrospect, it feels like he was ultimately setting us up for the curveball that would be 2014's breathtaking Music for the Uninvited.

The Brighton DJ/producer's first foray into long-form is still deemed a "mini-album," but to consider Music for the Uninvited as anything less than a fully realized LP would be selling it short. From the billowing orchestration and jazzy rhythms of opener "Inside the Deku Tree" on through "It's Just (House of Dupree)"'s jacking beats up until the plush, wistful chords which close out "St. Sinclair", Leon Vynehall infuses classically-minded house with childhood memories of borrowed cassette tapes and engrossing video games. The resulting seven tracks make for deeply personal and dreamy electronic music—most of which is perhaps best suited for quiet nights in with a hot cup of chai. And yet it's unlikely that you'll find a more tuneful and invigorating dancefloor album released this year. —Patric Fallon

Despite Madlib’s well-deserved reputation as a living legend of hip-hop production, it’s rare that he finds a worthy foil. In Freddie Gibbs, he’s met his match. If Madlib is a director then Gibbs is a documentarian, capturing harsh situations with the weary eye of the local newscaster who’s been doing his gig far too long. On Piñata, Madlib casts Gibbs as the hero of a street-level spaghetti western, surrounding him with retro-soul samples, tightly-wound snares, and paranoid piano interplay. The production teases out the understated maturity of a line like, “Maybe you's a stank ho, maybe that's a bit mean/ Maybe you grew up and I'm still livin' like I'm 16," on “Deeper”, about an ex who gets pregnant while Gibbs is in jail. On “Harold’s”, he turns his regular order at a local chicken joint into a metaphor for the unchanging rhythms of his everyday life. Gibbs can still rap like an unrepentant goon, and there are moments on Piñata that’ll make you blanche if you’re simply tired of hearing someone talk about how much he got his dick sucked. But this is a cinematic look at life in the shit, warts and all, rendered with such vibrant detail it’s easy to overlook—and even get swept up in—the ugliness of what’s going on. —Jeremy Gordon